The state govt. made their decision, belatedly, following the recommendations of a study into health service provision in the area. The region doesn't have the population base to support the specialist services currently being provided so the decision was made to increase the drainage area of a nearby hospital. Also Tasmania has real trouble attracting specialists and health professionals. To give an example, I'll be an allied health professional in 3 months. In my time at uni I've seen countless posters and emails practically begging me to consider working in Tassie. Is the govt. going to pay higher than average salaries to attract professionals to their pet hospital? Unlikely.
THE Commonwealth's rescue of an ailing Tasmanian hospital in a key Coalition marginal seat would be repeated elsewhere if it proved successful, John Howard said yesterday.While the Labor leader, Kevin Rudd, and the premiers labelled Mr Howard's unprecedented intervention a cynical pre-election stunt, Mr Howard cited it as evidence of why Australia should not have blanket Labor governments.
Mr Howard's intervention, which he announced at 5am yesterday on YouTube, concerned the Mersey Hospital in Devonport, in the seat of Braddon. The hospital was to have its services downgraded, which angered locals.
After the Tasmanian Government refused to change its mind, Mr Howard announced the hospital would be run by a trust of local medical personnel and business people and the Commonwealth would foot the annual bill of about $40 million.
Prioritisation is very important when it comes to service delivery. That's why there most likely isn't a hospital at the end of your street. As I said, the region has a small population base. That means specialists will be getting less work and practicing their skills less often. Lets say you have a myocardial infarct or a thrombotic stroke, do you want to be operated on by a specialist who does the proceedure once a week or one who does it every 6 - 12 months? Death rates at the hospital are almost certain to go up. In fact if the administrators have any sense they'll probably be palming most of their patients requiring specialist care to other hospitals in the area, making life harder for them.
Of course, voters see hospitals as magical places where one walks in, gets sprinkled with holy water and walks out healed. I didn't have much of an idea about hospital administration and community health provision before I got the tiny bit of education I have now. Even here in Brisbane, if you need a transplant or funky brain surgery out at Ipswich, you're going to the PA. There's no sense sticking those services out where there aren't enough people to properly make use of them. Unless there's an election to win.
$60 million dollars a year is a lot of money. It'd be enough to pay for rural hospitals to be able to provide basic services to their communities. It could strengthen early detection and intervention for chronic diseases in rural communities. Or it could buy you a marginal electorate. Priorities, Howard's all about them.
The Australian Medical Association was sceptical, furnishing a list of 550 rural and remote hospitals across Australia which warranted similar intervention.
Hospital leaders predict the move will fail to ensure high-quality care in Devonport and said it did not take account of the state's overall health planning.
The hospital has battled to find and keep medical specialists, according to local health officials, and two years ago a private operator handed it back to the state.
The Australian Healthcare Association said Mr Howard was "gravely mistaken" if he thought the hospital's problems could be fixed with a cheque.
Prue Power, the association's executive director, said the State Government had already spent an extra $21 million since taking the hospital over, and the decision to downgrade it followed extensive research which showed people would get high-quality care they needed at the larger Launceston Hospital, 80 kilometres away.
SMH
4 comments:
As Crikey pointed out (or someone did) there's two hospitals in the area that's bleeding resources and the only rational sense is to have one fully resourced one.
From today's Crikey
Tasmanian AMA president Professor Haydn Walters writes:
Planning healthcare services for 500,000 people scattered around a state the size of Scotland is no easy task. It has been made extremely difficult by communitarian and parochial rivalries, and the political responses to those which has meant that money for healthcare has been scattered around very thinly.
Healthcare has been more about winning elections rather than common sense and good planning. In the past that didn’t matter too much when hospitals were relatively unsophisticated but over the last 20-30 years, with technological advances and the need for specialisation and sub-specialisation, and the need for viable mass to make any hospital work effectively, the situation has become a nightmare.
In terms of the northwest coast, we have been left the poisonous legacy of having two district general hospitals pretty close together (a 20 minute drive) with one at the Mersey (near Devonport) and one at Burnie.
Because of the realities of local funding and manpower constraints, neither hospital is adequately funded, adequately staffed, or adequately supported with technology and staff. Both have been marginally viable for some time. There have been seven external reports, usually produced at enormous cost, over the last 20 or so years, all of which have come out saying there needs to be just one viable and sustainable general hospital serving the northwest coast population (and the smaller population down Tasmania’s west coast).
In general, Burnie is probably the most suitable place for this but there has been a lot of argument between the communities and no consensus. AMA policy has been that the best way to proceed would be a new Greenfield site somewhere that everybody could agree on (probably Ulverstone).
After two more recent reports in the last four years, and under a lot of pressure from organisations like the AMA and the Royal Colleges, the State Government over the last year developed a quite sensible strategic plan for healthcare development in Tasmania… at last!
Apart from the population in Devonport which perceives itself as losing its district hospital to an amalgamation on the Burnie site, everyone around the state has been extremely enthusiastic about this. It will involve not just a hopefully excellent hospital in the northwest, but also strategic development of comprehensive services integrated around the state.
The Devonport and Mersey Hospital has had enormous problems over the last five years or so in attracting adequate quality staff. Things have recently come to a head and the Intensive Care Unit had to be closed because of dangerous staffing levels. The emergency department is under huge pressure for similar reasons. This is all occurred before the integrated plan could be implemented. Unfortunately, the writing for the Mersey is on the wall and has been there for some time.
There in flies the Prime Minister of Australia with his own plan to “save” the Mersey Hospital. This seems to be a cynical electoral move which makes absolutely no sense for strategic health planning and indeed cuts across all the hard work and community consultation which has occurred. Trying to resuscitate the Mersey Hospital to do the work it’s been trying to do against enormous difficulties, can not possibly thrive. The Prime Minister’s initiative is bound to fail.
If, instead of this destructive move, the Federal Government could be constructive and invest their $45 million dollars a year to properly construct a single excellent acute general hospital for the Northwest then we could all be proud. As it is, the lack of strategic leadership and political manipulation of local sensitivities is shameful.
it's a sign of desperation - if you can't win support with policies and propaganda then you can buy support where you need it most. Pathetic, but I'm long past believing the majority are capable of seeing things like this for the hollow corrupt gestures they are. Let's just hope people still hate workchoices by the end of the year.
Keep the lolhowards coming!
And I'm wondering (somewhat irrelevantly to everyone else, but still) whether the Prue Power who's director of The Australian Healthcare Association is my cousin Prue Power - it seems a bit coincidental that there'd be two of them, surely?
Whoops, no, total coincidence. I just googled Prue Power and it came back with this - she's approx 300 years older than my cousin.
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